I want to peel your outer parts away
like I would to an orange,
and sink my fingers inside your skin
to feel the acid under my nails.

Your breath always smells of alcohol
and your hair glints red under streetlamps
like the wine bottles under your bed.

The chicken bones under your thin skin
are dry and hollowed out with age,
the ground-down core to fill the sand boxes
leaking trails to sugar in my dreams.

If I were a man you’d let me peel you,
trail my fingers over your face
and linger on the citrus corners of your mouth.
If I were a man, I wouldn’t want you.